Feed-Back to Idiocy

At the University of Illinois last week, Dr. Grant Fairbanks was having a fine time with a fiendish apparatus specially designed to turn sane human beings into temporary gibbering idiots. It does the dirty work by the cybernetic trick of tinkering with the "feedback" system that monitors human speech.

One of the methods of cybernetics (the science of control mechanism) is to look for similarities between the human nervous system and the brighter man-made machines. One of these is the feedback: some means by which either the brain or a machine keeps track of what it has accomplished. Without proper feed-back apparatus a ship-steering mechanism, for instance, does not know how much it has succeeded in turning the ship. Therefore it cannot decide accurately when to stop turning. It is likely to send the ship into wild zigzags.

The brain works in much the same way. It needs to know continuously what an "effector," e.g., an arm or a leg, is doing. In certain nervous disorders it does not get this information. Then such a simple action as picking up a pencil becomes almost impossible. The patient's hand oscillates wildly like the rudder of a zigzagging ship.

Reports on Speech. Most human feedback systems are built into the nerves or into the brain itself, where they cannot easily be tinkered with. The feed-back of speech is more accessible. The brain normally keeps track of speech by means of reports, which it gets through the ears and by bone conduction, upon the pronunciation of each syllable. As each report arrives, the brain tells the vocal apparatus to go ahead and speak the next syllable. The whole thing happens so rapidly and smoothly that the speaker is rarely conscious of it.

Dr. Fairbanks' gadget, which consists chiefly of a microphone, a tape-recorder and a playback amplifier, delays the reports on their way to the brain. Normally a speaker hears each syllable about a thousandth of a second after he has spoken it. By adjusting his apparatus to introduce delay, Dr. Fairbanks can lengthen this interval as much as he wants to. He can also make the sounds from the amplifier so loud that they drown out the sounds that reach the brain through the normal channels.

Agonized Frustration. When his "victim" first starts talking into the microphone, Dr. Fairbanks sets the time interval just like the normal one. The speaker is rather surprised to hear his own words so loudly and clearly. Then Dr. Fairbanks gradually lengthens the time interval until the speaker hears each syllable one-twenty-fifth of a second later than is normal. The result: the speaker is slowly driven toward the gibbering stage. His words won't come; he stammers, repeats, screams in agonized frustration. His face turns red; he sweats and trembles, showing many of the symptoms of emotional disorder. After the test is over, the victim quickly recovers.

The upset is caused by interruption of the normally smooth speaking process. The subject's brain expects to hear each syllable just after it is pronounced. When it hears the preceding syllable instead, it becomes confused. The brain begins to oscillate (like the zigzagging ship), and the shock echoes through the entire nervous system.

Dr. Fairbanks' gadget produces convincing stammering but is not intended to cure it. Its purpose is to study the whole speaking process. It also offers to experimental psychologists something they have longed for: an easy means of giving well-adjusted people safe, temporary nervous breakdowns.

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